Topband: Question on active vertical spacing

[James Cizek]

Hello all,

It was a slow start for me to get on 160 Meters, but I finally was able to
make that happen and last season was my first full season on the band.  A
lot of construction has happened in the nearby vicinity with new homes and
I've started to experience certain point noise sources at times.  Earlier
this spring, I was totally unable to work a station because of the local
noise source sitting right on top.

I usually use a SAL-30 for receiving and am very happy with it.  Because of
this occasional noise source, I've opted to add an additional RX system
this year.  I recently acquired a DXEngineering NCC-2 and the DXE-ARAV4-2P
active vertical antenna set in hopes of nulling out the local point source
when needed.

In the manual for the NCC-2, they state that the RX antennas should be 1/4
wave apart for optimum performance.  I'd like to use this setup on both 80
and 160, so I was wondering if it would be better to place them 1/4 wave at
160 apart or 1/4 wave at 80meters apart.  The instructions also state
reduced performance with too great or too little spacing, so I am curious
of opinions on optimal spacing for a compromise to use both bands.

I wrote DXengineering tech support but they never responded, so thought I'd
try the mind-trust here :)

Thanks for any input.
73
James
KI0KN
ps- I am only at 44 entities on 160M so I'll be as active as the band lets
me be this fall/winter!